


Farewell to Apotheosis

by Brezifus



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Catharsis, Character comes back from the dead, Emotional Sex, F/M, More words left unsaid than said, Mutual Pining, Post-Advent Children (Compilation of FFVII), Rain, Reconciliation, Resurrection, it's 5am there's no way i can tag this properly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29083962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brezifus/pseuds/Brezifus
Summary: Saying good-bye is not always a choice.Saying hello again is.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Tseng
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Farewell to Apotheosis

**Author's Note:**

> first of all it's incredible that i'm acknowledging advent children at all in any capacity
> 
> second of all y'all wouldn't fuckin believe the shit i had to endure this week irl
> 
> but yeah...wanted me some emotionally broken tseng trying to pretend it's all okay when what he thought was resolved unravels in front of him.......aeris comes back, and her lack of blame, well. it does him in.
> 
> apologies if it's sloppier or more meandering than my other stuff, it's been. A WEEK. A MONTH. A YEAR. AND JANUARY IS ONLY JUST ENDING.

The rain lasted for a week, neverending. The thirsty crags of rock around the desiccated Midgar soon flooded, leading some to question if the anger of the Planet had really been quelled. In its wake, however, little yellowed buds of young grass were sprouting. Tseng had never known these desolate lands to harbor life in dormancy, but he had been wrong many, many times before.

The following week the rain continued, though not as heavy. The skies remained gray but the clouds were lighter, occasionally making the rain sparkle with hints of sunlight. There was a beauty to it in a way, the greenery surrounding the safehouse seemed thicker and darker, like an untouched temperate jungle. Here Tseng brooded alone; his colleagues had thought it best to help repair the remaining citizenry of Midgar. Certainly that _was_ best, even the still-sore Elena had stayed behind as well.

At a certain point, Tseng couldn’t anymore.

The rain had just been water. It didn’t sting his eyes like the old acid rains would, didn’t taste of salt when it wet his lips. There was no flavor, no taste. Yet it had been sweet, fragrant, almost like an illusion. It had remained ever on the edge of his senses, for as soon as he realized he was tasting something more it flitted away from him. It almost felt like a game of hide-and-seek.

He had excused himself on sabbatical the moment the rains lessened.

The solitude of his thoughts coupled with the constant, gentle drum of rain soothed him. Nothing and no one was to disturb him, and no one except his Turks knew where he was. When there was a knock at the door and no notice from them, he approached with cautious bitterness. It was over, it was over, it was _all_ over. He wanted to be done—if only for a while, if only to allow himself to forget. Deep down fear gripped him hard, because what if, what if it wasn’t ever enough, what if the sweetness had been poison, _what if_. Tseng approached the door, sliding his loaded gun just out of sight but within reach if need be.

He opened the door and froze.

It was a dream.

Yes.

Had to be.

But when he moved to close the door so he could pinch himself awake without the scrutiny of her stare, Aeris pushed back with the flat of her palm, standing her ground with a shuddered inhale.

An inhale. Of _breath_.

How he hated the cruelty of dreams.

“Let me in, Tseng,” she said, her voice suspiciously calm and low and not what his dreams had shown him before, “Please?”

“No.” He should’ve known better than to speak to a dream, but with the tranquility of his sabbatical ruined, he was too angered to stop himself.

She inhaled again, shoulders rising, “I know what it looks like,” _Oh, did she now?_ “But, please, I want to talk to you.”

He glared down at the doppelganger, chin tipped upwards in a harsh and unkind gesture, “You are far too tepid to convince me.”

At that she smiled, brow furrowed like she was taking up a challenge. That, that might convince him. The smirk was feisty, her eyes just as stubborn. Still her voice was too gentle, too shaky, like she was tired and nervous and had been sleeping for a long, long time.

“If you won’t let Aeris in, would you let me in?” What an odd question. He hated dreams, “If you don’t want to see Aeris, and you’re not convinced that I’m her, then what’s the problem?”

She regarded him for a moment, with his rumpled white shirt that hadn’t been formally pressed in a fortnight, the two buttons undone at the top, the frumpy professional look he gave off that must’ve been as unfamiliar to her (if she was real) as she now was to him. Her lower lip pursed forward in an annoyingly familiar manner.

“What’s _your_ problem?”

The bite of her question made him stiffen as good as a falter. Stubbornly, deftly, she slipped herself inside, facing him half as a challenge, half to make sure she didn’t step over his boundaries. Such a dichotomy only she could pull off. Tseng could only shut the door to quiet the pitter-patter of rain sliding off broad leaves.

“Fine.” He relented with a dark yet tired tone, “What do you want?”

She blinked, “That’s the question you’re going with?”

He gave her the dignity of a gruff noise. In and out. That’s where he wanted her to go.

“No questions as to why I’m here? How I got here?”

He turned away from her towards the kitchen, “Heard it all before.”

The words left Aeris standing in the foyer, and he would’ve delighted if she had simply disappeared when he looked back, like a dispelled ghost. Instead, though she looked as pale as one, her features saddened and she followed him.

“Fine then,” she huffed, still too calm to truly be her, “It’s not that exciting anyway. The rain brought me back. Don’t know why, maybe someone wished on the right star this time.”

Tseng turned his back to her, setting a pot of coffee to be brewed with the mechanical precision he used to clean his gun. He noticed the tendons of his hand pop with each movement from the angry contortion of his muscles. Aeris sighed behind him, sliding into a chair at the table.

“They pulled me out of the pool of water at the church. The kids did. They’re so grown now...I suppose two years would do that, huh?”

He did not look back.

She sighed dramatically, “The _others_ were happy to see me. Especially Rude and Reno.”

He snapped back at that, eyes wide and incredulously angry, “ _What?_ ”

Aeris held her gaze steady, “Yeah. Didn’t take long to get them to tell me where you were.”

At once he was moving, long strides crossing to where he had left his cell phone. Doppelganger, dream, reality, how could his Turks just _lie by omission_ like that? The last time it had happened to him, that Turk found herself fired. Aeris continued to talk as he did, wearing her nonchalant mask as her ears remained alert and focused.

Flipping the phone open to no new messages, he was about to scowl when he realized something the exact moment Aeris’s voice came through to him with, “I told them not to tell you.”

He was able to read the words letter by letter on his phone screen.

This was not a dream.

He flipped the phone shut, pinching the pads of his fingers and squeezing tight. It had to be a dream. Tseng didn’t want to turn around and face this as if it was a reality. Without looking at her he set the phone back down and returned to the coffee pot, feigning patience by watching it brew. Aeris was quiet, mercifully so, but he felt her gaze between his shoulders blades, felt it wander down the length of his arm, past the rolled up sleeve, taking note of each bulging tendon down to the fingers gripping the edge of the counter. He was trying not to shake.

“Are you mad?”

“Are you real?” Tseng enunciated the words too well, forcing their smoothness to cover himself. Aeris swung her feet along the floor from her lazed position.

“Yeah.”

It was so casual an answer yet so timidly morose at the same time—like she wished she had better words for him, but truly didn’t. That, of course, was giving her benefit of the doubt, and as he watched coffee dribble down into the pot he grew more and more frustrated with himself that he found himself giving such benefits. What it would take to reject her was becoming a taller and taller order as the burden of proof lessened and lessened. Deep within him there was fear; a fear so complex it threatened to ruin him in front of this ghost of flesh and blood that was increasingly like Aeris.

Well. He hadn’t touched her. Perhaps she was just a hallucination. Perhaps it had been from the fragrance of the rain.

When the coffee had slowed to a drip, he yanked two mugs from the cupboards. One for each of them. Aeris watched the continuation of his angered movements in silence.

Then, as he was pouring the second cup, she spoke, “Is it because you’re the last to know?”

Tseng set the coffee pot down on the counter hard, holding it so tight it started to shake with his curbed rage. If Aeris reacted, he couldn’t hear it. But damn her anyway, damn her for meticulously putting words to pieces of his confusion that he didn’t want nor ask for. It was petty, it was stupid, it wasn’t important. _Geographically_ it made sense—and if she was a hallucination her cruelty was unmatched in logic. No, he didn’t need to be first to see her, in fact it would’ve been even more fair if she had never seen him. He was and remained to be Shinra’s dog. Nothing had changed between the two of them in all the years they had known each other.

But if it was between seeing him last or not seeing him at all, Tseng wished she would’ve chosen the latter.

Coffee, rest, send her on her way. Whoever had brought her here could be called back in a flash, and if he could dispel her presence, all the better. Tseng finally turned with their coffee and approached her.

Aeris scrunched her nose in distaste, “Don’t you remember how I like my coffee, Tseng?”

He grunted, “There is no creamer here.”

Pouting, she tapped her fingers on the table, “Why not?”

Tseng set the mug down, the gentle sound echoing in his ears like a funerary drum. His voice was quiet and factual as he simply said, “No need for it.”

She wasn’t going to be there to drink it, after all.

When she reached for it the tip of her finger brushed accidentally against his knuckle. It sent thorny sparks up his arm, twisting and digging into his muscles. It was only a finger tip. But the realness of its presence, the split-second of warmth it left on him, Tseng was going to burst.

Aeris sighed and complained further, “Do you at least have milk and sugar?”

Heartbeat thrumming in his throat and ears, Tseng spoke as if disconnected from himself, “You hate the taste of sugar in coffee.” It acted as a small victory; if he caught the doppelganger in this lie then all would be explained and he could wake up back in the world where she was familiarly dead.

“I’ll take it if it’s the only thing you have!” she puffed, and the explanation was so weak that a seasoned spy like him shouldn’t have taken it for an answer. But it made sense enough. If he was in his right mind, shrewd and sharp, he wouldn’t have let her get away with saying such flimsy arguments.

As it was, he slammed his own mug of coffee down and tore away from her to the living room window. It was wide, taking up the expanse of the wall to fill the view with trees. Broad leaves trembled and shook as rain fell. When the droplets grew fat the leaves weighed down, shifting the shades of green in a way that was fascinating, natural, and expected. Tseng fixated, eyes darting from leaf to leaf under the cloudy gray sky. He had watched these trees in rain so many times that their familiarity now was a comfort, even though he had only truly known them for a week. The woman he had known for seventeen years, however, was no longer familiar (yet she was, and would forever remain to be). He clasped his hands hard behind his back. Trembles started to rule him, starting from his chest and radiating outwards with the irregularity of his heartbeat.

Behind him, Aeris swallowed gulps of coffee despite the lack of creamer, despite no milk or sugar, despite everything. She gagged, too, as she should’ve. She was far too kind to reject his hospitality, or she was pitying him for enacting it despite the circumstances.

The chair shifted. Aeris’s footsteps approached.

His body went stiff and tall as her fingers ghosted his arm, gliding to the small of his back before resting warm against his spine. It worsened when she laid her head against his shoulder, standing side-by-side with him to stare at the leaves dancing in the rain. Aeris sighed. Tseng had not released a breath.

“I _did_ want to see you last…,”

Understandable. He was responsible for allowing Shinra to do what it did to her, after a certain point. Now that she had passed on the knowledge quite cordially, she could— _should—_ leave.

“But…,” Aeris sighed again, the expansion of her rib cage against his arm. So natural. Fluid. Alive. Impossible, “It’s not because…,”

The pause was long enough to indicate she couldn’t find the right words. Instead she nuzzled his shoulder like she was burrowing for shelter. Tseng felt something soft and pliant, but he ignored rationalizing the sensation. What he couldn’t ignore was her gentle gaze staring up at him—the wideness of her eyes as they expressed her concern, her hurt. He only saw it in peripherals. He couldn’t dare himself to see it in full.

“When you weren’t with the Turks, I got worried,” she said, “I was sure you’d be there.”

Tseng swallowed the rock in his throat and retorted, “What makes you say that?”

“You do not die so easily,” she whispered hoarsely.

He had been expecting a harsh comment on his nature to work and only work, not that. Anything but that.

It stung. He did not want to hear her speak about death.

“What do you want,” Tseng repeated himself, then swallowed hard as he struggled to say, “Aeris.”

Her thumb swept along his back and his breath staggered in the warmth of the gesture, “I wanted to see you.”

“That does not convince me.”

“That’s okay,” she raised her other arm to encircle him in her embrace, “It’s good just to be here.”

How could she say that?

It felt like a lie. Could she not leave him to his melancholy peace, must she have made the decision to seek him out—as if this meant anything to either of them, as if it might give them closure? He was her stalker, a shadow, a bodyguard only because needs must. Tseng had never been on her side, she was never stupid enough to believe that. He had been assigned to her because he could keep the distance, because he was entrusted to never break that distance. The job was over. She should not have sought him out. There was nothing to rebuild.

Aeris held him tighter as her body loosened its stress, sighing in relaxation. Her shoulders sagged and her feet slipped off into a comfortable balance against him, breathing in his scent through his rumpled shirt as the rain continued on.

“Leave,” he rasped, “Go back to your friends.”

Unfazed, she shook her head, “I don’t want to.”

Unraveling his arm from her, his hand shot up and dug into her hair, ready to pry her off and force her out the door. Aeris did not flinch save for a little noise of acknowledgment no different than a cat.

“I don’t want to, Tseng.”

He dug his fingers deeper into her scalp, meaning it as a warning. His grip was harsh, cold, unfeeling, utterly immovable—and shaking. Aeris remained unafraid against him, and he felt that soft and pliant sensation again; her lips moving in a chaste and comforting kiss.

“Not before I say thank you,” she murmured into him.

Chest seizing, he pulled her head back with his vice grip. Turning his head to gaze at her, he searched her solemn features for her mischievousness, her playful wording that he must’ve missed—but it wasn’t there. Not in the ways he desperately wanted them to be.

His eyes searched for too long, and whatever chastising he had in mind swept away. Fingers trembling in her hair, scraping at the raindrops that remained in their strands, his lips fell open and he uttered in a hushed tone.

“Was I right to let you go?”

The corner of her lip tugged slightly as she answered, “I would’ve run away if you didn’t.”

“Would you have?” Concern had crept into his voice, old and harrowed and distraught. Her tugged lip wavered. In her mind, yes, she would have. In reality? It was hard to say. If nothing had happened just right, just perfectly, she very well could’ve stayed in Elmyra’s house until President Shinra’s patience wore out. But then he was murdered, and Rufus had no interest in using the Ancients for his vision of the Promised Land. Freed by this apathy, Tseng had allowed her to slip away without a second thought, as intentional in his actions as he always was.

Even if he had known she would’ve slipped away to her death, the overwhelming fear mixed with excitement that brought her life in her freedom prior would’ve been enough to convince him it was worth it. But was he _right?_

Aeris held his gaze, water pooling in her eyes. They were green, reminiscent of the leaves in their liveliness yet a different, independent shade. Something like the inlaid turquoise he saw in the Temple of the Ancients, and dimly he wondered if they used the stone so lavishly because it reminded them of themselves. There was also a reminiscence of mako in their color as well, though nothing so actually acidic as the reactors were. Something unique, something belonging only to her, and something Tseng hadn’t realized he would miss so much it caused him pain to see them again.

“Thank you,” she whispered, no longer dancing along her intentions, “For everything.”

“I allowed you to die.” he protested.

“You allowed me to choose.”

His heart twisted, squeezing emotion to his mind. Clouded and scrambling to hold onto his burdens, Tseng’s shoulders shuddered with shallow breaths. Allowed her to choose? He won’t make that mistake again.

Pulling her hair just enough so her chin tipped upward, Tseng crashed his lips into hers, moving with unleashed fervor. She accepted it, her own hands moving from an embrace to digging into him like he did to her. Hard, desperate, Tseng kissed her with heavy breaths that carried the weight of his voice with them. His other hand reached her, clawing at her hips and bunching up her dress without pause. Suddenly her palms were at his cheeks, nails scraping his hairline as she kept him in place as much as he was keeping her. Parting from her did not give enough space to deeply gasp for air—only quick staccato pants before they crashed together again.

Two years ago this would’ve felt wrong. Now, though, so little of what was right or wrong mattered. Shinra was in shambles. Midgar was destroyed. Aeris had died. What little good he could do never outweighed the wrong, and certainly nothing could forgive him of the sin of letting the only good he had nurtured be slaughtered in an instant. Aeris’s hands pulled at him like her death had oriented her as much as it had him, stripping morality and leaving her with the barest bones of knowledge and emotion.

Wind left her as he pushed her against the wall adjacent to the window. There he pinned her, first with his hands then his body as he devoured her with hard and deep kisses. Undulating in whatever space he left her, Aeris moaned into his mouth. Alive, human, _warm_. The heat of her breath made fog bloom on the window, misting up the leaves in his peripherals until there was only vague shapes and the sound of rain to fill in for them. Tseng pulled one of her thighs around his waist, allowing him closeness his instincts desired. Meeting her efforts halfway, he grinded her against the wall to her small cries of satisfaction. His lips never closed even when he pulled away, too starved for breath and too lost to regain composure. The familiar green of her eyes—emotive, lovely, needy—pulled him deeper. The leaves only danced. They couldn’t look back at him with agonized desperation.

Plunging beneath her lips, Tseng warmed the skin of her collar with his mouth, finding buttons already torn apart. Memories of doing so were already hazy at best—the past was falling away, replaced by how important the present had become. Aeris arched to him, her breath shrill as her heart pounded beneath his tongue. He wrapped his arms around her waist, grunting twice before he pulled his lips away. Lifting with an almost youthful vigor, Tseng carried her to his bed.

Aeris rose on her knees from the mattress to pull his lips to hers as he undressed, just as unwilling to part as he was. Resting her palms on his shoulders, she reached up to him and he reciprocated, letting his clothes fall to the floor. As he crawled onto bed with her, unhinged little noises sputtered in her mouth—attempts at words that never came to fruition due to the sheer force of rushing emotion. Tseng took her body with as harsh of a grip as before, pulling her flush against his. Her nails dug into his shoulder blades, leaving pink scratch marks as they shifted. Sucking on the slope of her shoulder and leaving clusters of red marks, Tseng moaned in higher and higher pitches until he grabbed her hips and pushed in.

Aeris gasped, long and moaning as her walls acclimatized to him. Her grip mimicked his, and with their tight interlocking limbs Tseng found his body in limbo of ownership—it moved because his instinct drove it, because she wanted him to, because she moved as her instinct drove, because he wanted her to. Cyclical, one, the same, desperate, together. His long hair tangled with hers, loosened by their movements. Tseng thrust hard and fast into her slick warmth, driven to further ecstasy from both their moans and cries.

He had missed her.

So much.

So much so that upon her arrival the brutal force of humanity had overtaken him until the only answer had become to be in this limbo with her. Was it ironic to relish in the taste of her life so freely given—sweat, scent, lips, essence, tears—when it had just as freely been taken away? Her hips swiveled and he seethed, burning hot and throbbing for her as he gleefully tested the endurance of her newfound life. She never disappointed.

No, Aeris had never disappointed him.

When they climaxed they curled around each other, shivering as their orgasms took control. Tseng could not, would not part from her even as the shrillness of her breaths became deep and satisfied, the pounding of her heart becoming relaxed and rhythmic. If he let her go again, she’d sink beneath the bed into the depths of her coffin. If he let her go, he might wake up and realize this really was just a cruel dream from the start.

Aeris chuckled, the sweet sound traveling through his forehead from where he had buried himself against her chest. Her hand idly played with locks of his long hair. At first he thought she was untwisting them from her own hair, but the more she played the more it seemed the opposite.

“You know now, right?” she rasped, her voice spent and her energy failing her as she melted into his embrace, “Why you had to be last…,”

He grunted softly. Aeris wrapped her arms around him and turned, resting her face in his hair. Her mouth opened to answer her own rhetorical question, then it closed with a deep sigh. Her limbs grew heavy even as she continued to stroke and caress him.

“I’m done adventuring, I just want to be home,” Aeris whispered as she started to drift off, “...For now.”

He was going to question it, retort without even removing himself from her chest, point out that Elmyra was her home, not him.

But somehow he knew what she’d say if he did.

“For now.” he repeated to her hum as she cuddled herself into a deep slumber. The words felt good in his mouth, hopeful—focused on the present but turned towards the future. Words his cruel dreams never uttered from their trenches of the past, words they couldn’t utter. She was real. She was home. Tseng stretched and felt himself follow Aeris’s lead.

Outside, the rain had slowed to a gentle stop.


End file.
